Reading time:
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of images from Sarah Polley.
You may know Sarah Polley as a TV star, famous for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary‘s books. Subsequently she became famous for her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996).
Following those turns, she became almost equally celebrated for her directorial effort with Away from Her (2006), for which she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
But I write about Polley today, as the author of a deeply affecting memoir, Run Towards the Danger.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the book is that she reveals she, too, views herself as a survivor of assault by the former CBC host Jian Ghoemeshi. Here are my favourite examples of her figurative language.
- When the [#MeToo] movement ran into a courtroom [in the Jian Ghomeshi case] it was a train crash, engines on fire and gears mangled and shooting in all directions.
- As we walk back to where we came from, we see Aila, running towards us in the distance. Her bathing suit is bright pink and she is brilliant, popping colour in the sunshine, the blue sea behind her.
- Dr. Collins comes in, in what I like to call a burst of AMERICA! He is confident, direct, to the point; he owns the space. If personalities had weather systems attached to them, our hair would be blown back.
